When you enter Tammy Fender’s holistic spa in West Palm Beach, Florida, you’ll immediately notice the scent of plant essences and the sight of everyone in white—a color of purity and simplicity. You will be presented with 13 essential oils, distilled by Fender herself, and begin to smell each of them and consider how you respond.
Choose three oils that appeal to you, and they will be custom blended.
Fender will tell you a bit about the oils you’ve chosen, the properties they have, and the benefits they bring. She’ll help you to understand more about why you responded positively to them. Next, she will ask you what you hope to address during your time there.
You’re probably there for a skin concern, but as part of the diagnostic process, she will also ask you questions about diet, sleep, and stress levels; mind, body, and spirit are treated as one in this holistic setting.
For Fender, beauty is the outer result of an inner process. She sees herself as a facilitator: Her role is to help her clients start to understand what is going on in their minds and bodies, and how to make small lifestyle changes that will lead to transformation.
“I’ve seen clients look younger years later than when they first started coming,” Fender said.
Nature’s Healers
Some 30 years ago, Fender pioneered this holistic approach to skin care in the United States.“If you googled the word ‘holistic’ 25 years ago, I think my name was the only one that came up,” she said with a laugh.
Since then, she has researched and experimented with hundreds of plant and herbal remedies and searched the world for the purest plant ingredients to use in her treatments. She distills 13 essential oils for custom use in her three spas in South Florida, and has a specialized skin care line that includes serums, moisturizers, cleansers, and masks.
Her plant-based blends and heart-centered approach to her clients’ overall well-being have gained her a widespread reputation and a clientele that includes celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Julianne Moore, and Melania Trump.
While she was in school, Fender worked at a cosmetic counter. Always interested in the way people’s minds work, she was curious about what caused people to buy certain products.
“What are they really looking for?“ she would ask herself. ”Do they really believe it will work?”
She always wondered what might be going on on a deeper level to bring people into the store. She also started to wonder about the ingredients in the products and whether they actually worked.
Instinctively, Fender was aware that there is a deep connection between emotions and the body. As she began to research ingredients, she became increasingly concerned that there were no real benefits, emotional or physical, to some of the synthetic ingredients on the lists.
“Surely, there’s a better way,” she thought, and began to research medicinal plants and herbs and entered the world of essential oils.
Fender has felt a profound affinity to plants ever since she was a child observing her grandmother in the garden.
“I recognized very young that the plant kingdom is the best source of our food and medicine,” she said. “I also felt that there was a consciousness, a deeper correlation between man and plant, through the heightening of the senses. So I began to take a deep dive into that realm of working with plants and plant remedies.”
Her research was pre-internet, and she scoured old books and magazines about vitamins, anything she could find that would teach her more. When she traveled, she sought out indigenous people working with medicinal plants.
“But,” she said, “until you start to apply them and see if they really work, it’s only research, right?” So, slowly, she began to use some of what she was learning.
She started carefully.
Once while in the Bahamas, she was with a friend who cut his leg with a machete. She had read that geranium can help to stop bleeding, and she happened to have some of the essential oil on hand. She applied it, and it worked. Another time, her infant nephew was experiencing constipation. She knew that dill was thought to help with such problems, but being new to the use of essential oils and aware that they are usually too strong for babies, she boiled the dill to administer it through inhalation, and was able to ease her nephew’s discomfort.
The more she experimented and observed, the more she became a true believer in plants as healers.
The Heart of Holistic Wellness
Fender decided to become a licensed aesthetician and used what she had learned to treat her clients. Her treatment room became a living laboratory.“When I started to work with the essences, I could see an emotional shift—sometimes it would trigger a happy emotion, or I would find that it would bring back grief,“ she explained. ”When people seek spa treatments, usually there’s something much more going on.”
Fender hopes to be able to inspire her clients with a vision of long-term gain. By taking the long view, she aims to help them begin to make subtle lifestyle changes that will lead to better, holistic well-being.
One such change could be simply slowing down.
“I’m a big believer in meditation,” Fender said. “One thing I do when I have a monkey mind bouncing around is to say gently, ‘I am at peace. All is well.’ Or even just the word ‘relax.’” She explained that the subconscious mind always takes what you say as truth, so that can soothe the brain.
Similar to meditation is using the breath to calm oneself.
“I might go through a practice of breathing in all that is good and beneficial and then releasing what no longer serves me,” she said. “What’s really beautiful is that when the body begins to relax, so does the mind, and vice versa. So you start to really see that connection between body and mind.”
One of the most important parts of holistic well-being for Fender is spending time in nature. She has observed that nature is where we balance ourselves, and that being outside, away from screens and to-do lists, heightens our senses. She loves to walk barefoot on the grass, on sand, or in water and become fully aware of the sensations in her body and spirit when she connects directly with the earth.
Fender loves her gardens. She has a tea garden, a medicinal garden, and many fruit trees. She also keeps bees and has a few chickens in her yard.
“You don’t have to live on a farm to grow a few of your own vegetables or to keep a few chickens,” she said. She believes that the benefits reaped from the planting of just a few seeds are immense.
“Planting these little things connects you back to the earth. We might think that we are taking care of them, but really they’re healing us. The more we can get back to that, the more peace we have in a chaotic world.”
That’s holistic living—which Fender believes is our most natural state of being.
“What I like to share is that so often it is not in the doing, but rather in the being, that we are able to allow the body to experience the natural rhythms of sleeping, eating, resting—that’s when we are at our best,” she said. “Simplicity is the truth behind holistic well-being.”
Other people’s happiness and well-being have always been very important to Fender, even as a child.
“I’m inspired by a love of caring for others,” she said. “I have a tendency to gravitate to the heart center. We are always in our head, but I focus on helping people understand what they are feeling in their heart.”
For Fender, that’s where true beauty begins.
Making Time for Self-Care: Tammy Fender’s Daily Routines
Morning Rituals
I like to get up very early. I focus on detoxification and calling in clarity. I start my morning typically with lemon water to help alkalize the body.I don’t make a big to-do about this, but I spend my first hour in meditation. Prayer is very important to me.
Skin Care
I love to connect with plants, so sometimes I begin by wiping my skin down with rosewater. Rose is a very powerful cell rejuvenator. It’s very refreshing to the skin; it’s a gentle way of cleansing it.I apply my awakening eye gel, just a couple of drops.
I finish my routine with a little serum, depending on the weather. Serums in general penetrate deeper than cream; they’re typically in an oil base and the skin absorbs them very well.
I like to keep the routine simple. When you’re doing this, you’re cleansing the skin and applying these products with awareness. I think that’s the most important part: You’re connecting with yourself and with the plants that you love.
Evenings
I like to take time for a bath. It doesn’t have to be lengthy or even every day, but going back to these basic practices means you’re caring for your own well-being.Welcoming Spring: Tammy Fender’s Skin Care Tips
In the winter months, our skin care focus is all about protection. Spring is such a great time for cleansing. I think that gently exfoliating, removing the winter dullness, and allowing the skin to regenerate naturally is important.Exfoliate
We can do this through some form of gentle exfoliation. Be sure to use a micro-exfoliator, which will be gentle. We don’t want ever to cause the skin to have to go into repair mode. The epi-peel in our skin care line, known as “glow-on-the-go,” is perfect for this. Massage gently onto clean skin using a circular motion to stimulate circulation. Leave for five minutes and wipe off with a warm, damp cloth.
Regenerate
One way we help our skin regenerate is by massaging the oils into the skin, bringing them a bit deeper into the tissue. Rose is a rejuvenating oil, and a product like our Quintessential Serum is perfect for hydrating and replenishing the skin. When we increase microcirculation, that’s key to anti-aging. All cells need nutrients and oxygen to thrive, and through manipulation of the skin, that’s slowing the aging process.When using essential oils, be sure to dilute them properly in a carrier oil. Essential oils are very strong and can burn or damage skin if used directly. Some can be used undiluted in minute amounts: a drop of rosemary on the palms in the middle of the day gives a boost of clarity and energy. Peppermint is very clearing, and lavender calms the nervous system.
